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Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

So what do I do about this? Or more particularly about this: “Copyright (c) 2016 tangzhentao <tangzhentaoxl@sina.cn>”? I don’t mind people using sources from my repos, but I do mind them claiming copyright. I would appreciate advice and thoughts.

Update: On Jeremy Tregunna’s advice, I sent an email: “You are welcome to create Cocoapods using my repositories, but you are not welcome to claim copyright ownership, change the license (BSD attribution in this case), or otherwise misattribute my code. ” I asked tangzhentao to correct the matter immediately.

Update: Tangzhentao responds: “I just saw this problem today in Github and then I went to check my email. Thank everybody to piont out this mistake, especially Erica Sadun. Now I have corrected this mistake. But I don’t know if I really correct this mistake. If not, please remind me, thanks.” There are no changes to the authorship or copyrights, I have asked him/her to update within 24 hours or I will contact Github.

I’ve been a fan of PaintCode for a long time. PaintCode is a drawing and programming app that lets you move between code and rendered pictures. With it, you can create paths and fills, and then paint that information right into your app code using a variety of development languages.

Mike A at PixelCut dropped me a note last night letting me know that PaintCode 3 is now ready for release. The new version adds Android code generation, JavaScript, Telekinesis and more, in addition to Objective C and (now) Swift 3 support.

You can now use parameterized methods to draw into target rectangles. The app supports destination behaviors like aspect fit, stretch, center, etc. Although I’ve long since developed similar code for my own use, this is a great feature to add without relying on the end-coder’s expertise.

PixelCut has also made the choice to leave the Mac App Store. I’ve reached out to them to find out more about their decision.

PaintCode isn’t cheap but it’s a good tool for anyone who uses a lot of vector art, drawing, and paths in their code and they’ve been dedicated to keeping the tool current and updated. Existing customers get a 20% discount off the $99 app price.

I am a shortcut-addict. Right now my drugs of choice are the superb Keyboard Maestro and Apple’s built-in Spotlight. Now that I bought my new (well, new-ish refurbished) Macbook Pro, I’ve been frustrated by my trackpad and the limited vocabulary of available useful gestures and the overwhelming vocabulary of gestures I don’t think I’ll ever actually use.

While Safari’s pinch-to-overview tabs is nifty, it’s slow and annoying. I just want to flip between tabs and I don’t want to have to reposition my hands from their “scroll au natural” baseline.

Enter BetterTouchTool ($7, with adjustable pricing). It’s basically Keyboard Maestro for trackpads and within minutes, I was set up with my new touch-then-tap to flip tabs. It was exactly what I needed and my money was soon winging its way through Paypal.

Like Keyboard Maestro, you can set the scope of the gesture to be universal or a single app. It offers a wide range of gesture customization, and you can set it up to activate menu items, take screenshots, mimic the built-in gestures with different touch styles, and more.

If you want to give it a full test ride, the developer offers a 45 day try-before-you buy. For me, it solved a problem that needed solving, it worked, and I was sold.

I continue to struggle with “work on the go”. Daughter has taken my laptop (although that itself was not an ideal solution), leaving me with just an iPad and keyboard to work with away from the house.

When your brain and fingers are absolutely wired for Emacs editing, it’s a frustrating experience to have to work on the iPad, with all its touching. As a touch-typist, any time I have to move my hands away from the keyboard, it feels like I have failed.

After some searching around App Store, I eventually downloaded a few Emacs-style editors. Of these, em notes (about five bucks) offered the best solution. It links with your Dropbox account and enables you to edit text in an application folder there, ensuring you can load and work on documents and have them available as well in the “real world”, aka anywhere you’re not working on an iPad.

The app by Daisuke Kawamura is not entirely ported to English. Expect to find a few non-localized menu items and help write-ups. Despite that, and despite its Engineer-looking bare-bones design, it represents the best I could find for now although I hold out hope for better.

The fonts are adjustable, it integrates well with the system pasteboard, and you can disable the alternating blue and white lined background which caused me irrational anger. The key bindings are settable to either True Emacs or Mac-style, which is a really nice touch.

I could not get rid of the carriage return symbols which continue to haunt and irritate me and the app doesn’t respond to Command-N to create new files. Argh.

There’s a cool little feature for renaming files that I discovered by accident, by the way. Just tap the name on the navigation bar and it transforms into a name editor. Nice.

If only, the app could export a keyboard for other apps that supported Emacs key entry as well, it would come close to ideal. As it stands em notes isn’t pretty or perfect but I’m glad I forked over the money for it.

A few unrelated points:

While I’m writing about keyboard entry, I’d like to point out how frustrating keyboard-based iOS spotlight is. You can hop into it using Command-Space, just like on a Mac, but it’s slow as anything and if you’re trained to follow that launch with the text you’re searching for, 99% of the time, it will type into the currently active program instead of Spotlight because, yes, Spotlight launch really is that slow.

Once in Spotlight, there’s no way to navigate search results by the keyboard, so you have to reach around and touch the screen to pick the item you’re hunting for. So annoying.

As I was testing text entry today, I realized how far away I keep my monitors. The relatively small size of the iPad normally doesn’t bother me because I interact with it much nearer than I would with a proper monitor.

Using a stand and keyboard made it almost unusable for my eyesight because the iPad was pushed back so far. I think this is one of my major issues with laptops in general too. I tried setting up the iPad to my left to get it closer but it just gave me a sore neck.

Middle child and I were at the dollar store earlier this week. It’s fall break and we were feeling antsy and rich, with dollars in our pockets and hours to kill. So we picked up one each of Crayola’s Color Studio HD+ and Light Marker products for a cool buck each (originally priced at $29.99 and co-branded with Griffin).

After returning home and putting these technologies to the test, we quickly figured out why they had been discounted down to a buck each.

They kind of suck.

The Light Marker app (free) uses your iPad’s onboard camera to look at a colored flashlight, letting your little artistic prodigy draw pictures from a foot or two away from the canvas. I’m not joking here. The child waves the flashlight in a dim or dark room, and with luck, manages to “draw” images to the screen.

It’s a terrible user experience and a terrible app.

However, it’s not nearly as bad as the unusable Crayola ColorStudio HD+ with stylus. This “stylus”, believe it or not, works by emitting a high pitched irritating pulsing beep, which the iPad tracks and triangulates to figure out where the “stylus” is on-screen. It also has a hideous color-changing light-show on the side of the “stylus”.

You have to push really hard to get the iPad to recognize the interaction. My daughter is way better at this than I am, and she drew the magnificent inspired art work at the top of the post.

Both apps are shortly going to be trashed.

As for the products, the Light Marker stylus is of moderate use in that it is, in fact, a flashlight, so can be used as a flashlight. The HD “stylus” will be in the trash shortly as it gave me a headache during use and its only good feature seems to be that it…no…never mind. It doesn’t have a good feature.

However, hidden within the packaging of the Light Marker is a damned fine iPad stand that we *loved*. Well worth that $1, this collapsable stand has rubberized footers, a solid build, and can not only be used with the intended iPad, but also pretty much every iDevice and Kindle we could throw at it — regardless of width and case. It folds down to almost nothing but is strong enough to throw into a backpack or purse.

I’m probably going to go back and buy a few more Light Marker packages because this stand is awesome.

To summarize: both products are crap, not worth $1, let alone $30. Given the ubiquity of $1 tablet styluses at the dollar store, it’s not as if they couldn’t have just packaged a decent toddler-appropriate stylus. This is a perfect example of people trying to be too clever and not at all practical when putting together a product.

However, if you have a Dollar Tree near you, head on over and buy some of these stands. I loved ’em.

Update: Compared to my beloved Two-Hands stands, this is nothing to write home about. Not nearly as stable, won’t move with the device when you pick it up, can’t adjust the angle with exact precision etc. BUT unlike the Two Hands, this cheapy stand can handle Kindle (Two Hands ends are too thin), thick cases (same problem), phones and ipod touches. I’ve been using this all afternoon for plopping testing devices into. If you’re looking for the ultimate iPad stand, stick with the Two Hands. For throwing testing devices onto, this is great.

Ghost Note ($9.99, try before you buy) offers a really clever OS X utility. It evaluates the context of your current work state, whether you’re in a web browser, or selecting a file in the Finder, or editing a document in Photoshop, and it enables you to add comments to the context of your work.

For example, the screenshot at this top of this write-up shows a note that only appears when I’m working on new posts. That means I can keep a running log that’s specific to my task, and it’s always ready and available when I’m working in that context.

It’s rare to find a utility that’s both novel and so well thought out.

I had a few qualms in usage, primarily tied to the thinness of the fonts (mostly due to my weak eyes) but on the whole, I really liked the concept and the implementation. You can change the background of the note for better contrast. I went with yellow over black in the end.

Be aware that you need to install scripts to support some of the context inference. These are added to your Documents folder as Apple Scripts and are mostly harmless. However, context-sensing is incomplete and you may need to add and customize those scripts if your tasks extend beyond those already supported.

The app offers you a one-week trial period. I encourage you to kick its wheels. Nice find!

Branches for iOS manages issues for GitHub and Bitbucket projects. The free basic app helps you navigate your open and closed issues, review commits (including file diffs), and view markdown files. In-app purchases (one to unlock GitHub, one for Bitbucket) enable you to edit issues and comments, assign issues to collaborators, and update milestones. The two IAPs will be marked down from $10 to $5 during WWDC Week. Contact the developer on Twitter for more information.

Local Denver developer Santiago Gonzalez will be discounting his MapleTasks project and task management system during WWDC. The app offers both standard and pro plans and supports web, iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch.

Maximilian Litteral’s Flow Web Browser will be marked down 50% to $0.99 for WWDC. The discount should apply starting around Sunday or Monday. Ping the developer on Twitter for app details.

Rest Timer reminds you when to take a break. At 60% off during WWDC, it will retail at just $1.99. I’ve previously written about the app and its coached exercises.

Developers can compose and upload iOS/OSX app descriptions and localizations to iTunes using Jack from Christian Beer. Described as “iTunes Connect but like a word editor”, Jack’s on sale for $15 this week (normally $25).

I have a hate-love-hate-hate relationship with Notes. I love that Notes is built into both iOS and OS X and that it automatically syncs between devices and my home computer. I hate that individual notes constantly clone themselves into a dozen nearly identical versions of the same information. Apple does a terrible job in resolving conflicted edits. It also has a nasty tendency to entirely lose stuff. Life lesson learned: If it’s important, email it, don’t note it.

Developer Raffael Hannemann is a CS student, recipient of a WWDC 2014 scholarship, and has developed DailySales to help developers track their iTunes Connect sales figures. His app integrates into Yosemite’s Today View, which is a nice change from other solutions that offer stand-alone apps or take up precious menu bar space.

If TUAW were still up and running, DailySales would probably be an app that I’d look at and then, to be honest, pass on reviewing. It’s student-written, student-quality, and full of good intentions but it offers a minimum to distinguish itself from other competing products in the market place. However, TUAW is no longer up and running, I don’t have an editor to be responsible to, and Hanneman’s email made a great pitch.

The set-up procedure is a bit of a pain. You have to move past endless screens of legalese. You have to install Java because this requires Java to use Apple’s Autoinjestion class, rather than scraping the iTunes Connect website. It wasn’t a particularly big burden to get started but it wasn’t turn-the-key-and-get-going either.

But once you get past the painful setup, the app works. I’ve had it running over the weekend and I find that it well matches Hannemann’s initial pitch: that the app is “decent and convenient”.

The presentation is pleasant and unobtrusive. I do wish I could put in a time-out, like “don’t check more often than once an hour or twice a day”. I have other material I use the Today view for, and having the pane update each time is visually distracting.

The app has failed to update a number of times. On these occasions, it directed me to look at the console for errors: (Click to enlarge.) So it’s not always smooth sailing.

Like other apps in this arena, Hannemann recommends that you set up a sales-figures only account at iTunes connect for extra security, and your credentials are stored using the system keychain.

All in all, I find Daily Sales to offer a promising beginning to a potentially solid application. It fills a need that many developers encounter, and its $5.99 sales price makes it affordable compared to the competition.

You can learn more about Daily Sales and Hannemann’s other software at his WeAreYeah website.